Page 29 of Begin Again
When Sam returns to the living room, he’s fully clothed but his hair is still damp and now that I know exactly what he’s got hiding under all of those clothes, I’m not sure I can handle looking at him. So I close my eyes and go through my new alfredo recipe in my mind. Extra parmesan. Cream. Butter. Loads of garlic. Fresh parsley. It’s nothing special, but it’s delicious. I think I’ve finally perfected the combo of ingredients.
Sam snaps his fingers in front of me.
“What?” I look up at him. I zoned out enough that I didn’t even hear what he said.
“I asked what you were doing here. In my apartment,” he says as he falls next to me on the couch. There’s about six inches between us, but that distance is lined with gasoline and I’m a match ready to catch fire and burn us both.
My cheeks burn. “I just wanted to be alone.”
He tilts his head to one side. “Trouble in paradise?”
“You could say that,” I answer with a forced laugh. His eyes turn serious and my stomach flips. “I just wanted to be alone,” I repeat. “Why are you back?”
“Trip was over.” He closes his eyes. “I’m only here for a few days.”
“Great.”
He is so close that I could reach out and touch him if I wanted to. I curl my hands into fists so hard that I know my nails will leave marks in my palms.
He settles into the couch and without opening his eyes, he says, “We should go out, catch up.”
I swallow the bile that rises in my throat. If Mitch ever found out that Sam even suggested that we hang out, I don’t even want to think about what he’d do. “I can’t.”
“Come on.” He looks at me now. “You can’t be working that much? Do you still work nights? I could take you to breakfast.”
“No, Ican’t.”I look at him and beg him with my eyes to not dig, to not ask why. But it’s like he knows everything without me having to say a word.
His mouth forms a tight line. “Has he hurt you?”
I swallow thickly but don’t say anything.
“Annie?” His voice is low and angry and I hate that in this moment all I can think about is that I can’t remember the last time he called me ‘sunshine’. “Did he hurt you?”
I look up at the ceiling, take a deep breath, and then look at Sam. I can’t lie to him. For some reason, it’s easier to lie to Chiara because she sees Mitch all the time and just like everyoneelse, she sees the side of him that I fell for. But Sam has never met Mitch.
“I’m my mothers daughter, after all. I know how to pick a winner.” Tears prick my eyes but I blink them away.
He moves so fast that one second I feel like I’m about to fall apart and the next moment he is wrapping his arms tenderly around me, pulling me against him, and holding me together. “Oh, Annie. You’re nothing like your mother.”
For the first time in far too long, I feel like I can breathe easily. I feel perfectly safe and okay and normal in his arms and the thought nearly undoes me. I choke out a sob as he pulls me tighter against his chest, one hand holding me to him, and he runs his fingers through my hair with his other hand. We stay like that for a long time, me silently crying and Sam simply holding me.
When my tears run dry, he eases away from me and heads into the kitchen. He returns a moment later with a glass of water. “Drink, or you’ll get a headache.”
I chug the water as he disappears down the hallway again. When he returns, he’s holding my tattered copy ofEmmathat I never got back from him after the bowling alley all those years ago. I nearly start to cry as he sits beside me on the couch, opens the book to the first page, and starts to read.
There are so many words that he and I need to share, like what he’s doing here with me and I should tell him about Mitch and everything he’s done, but instead, I put my head on his shoulder and listen to his soft candor as he reads aloud my favorite book.
15
SAM
October 2022 - Sam is 28, Annie is 26
I nearly run into an older woman who’s calmly walking through the airport in my haste to get a taxi. “Sorry,” I yell as I run past, not waiting to hear her response.
I have to get to Annie.
It’s been several months since I last saw her, when we stayed up all night and she told me all about her relationship with that vile man and then in the morning she went back to him. I begged her to quit, but she told me she couldn’t quit and that she had to ease him out of the relationship again before she could be done for good. I told her that was a crappy reason, but I couldn’t convince her before I had to leave again. Because of a contract, I was only in town for three days before I started a backpacking trip all around South America, which is where I was until Noah called me yesterday and told me that I needed to come home.
